Obituary

George Webb 1929 - 2007

Tuesday, 8 January, 2008

Cass Business School is very sad to learn of the passing of George Webb, former Senior Fellow at Cass Business School.  George worked at City University Business School, as it was known then, from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s and at one time was head of the Management Development Centre.

George was born in Kenya on Christmas Eve in 1929 where his father was a schools inspector.  He was brought up in Kenya, where he largely spoke Swahili, and was sent home to school in Malvern.  He subsequently attended King’s College, Cambridge to read English Literature before switching to Economics.

He had a very colourful working life as a colonial administrator in Kenya and later a senior officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.  On retiring from the service in 1985 he joined the staff of City University Business School, running its external courses with great distinction. His City/Whitehall courses, bringing Mandarins and Captains of Industry together, were particularly important.

George was a very popular member of staff and was fascinated by the City. His view of it as "another country" prompted him to write a book, “The Bigger Bang: growth of a financial revolution” (1987), about how the City worked, as viewed by an outsider, which is perhaps ironic as he was heavily involved in different parts of the Square Mile. He made a  major contribution to the re-launch of Gresham College in the early 90s and he was also a liverman of the Scriveners Company.

He was very interested in the work of Rudyard Kipling, becoming an expert on the writer. Taking over the editorship of the Kipling Journal from Roger Lancelyn Green in 1980, Webb applied great energy to recruiting subscribers and increasing the size and circulation of the publication, which he edited for over twenty years.

Webb's other great passion was the Travellers Club, of which he was chairman from 1987 to 1991. It is generally accepted that his ability as a leader and as a motivator of people played a large part in saving the club from extinction.  He was appointed OBE in 1974 and CMG in 1984.  George Webb, who died on December 9, is survived by his wife and by their two sons and two daughters.

Several members of City University and Cass Business School share their memories of George Webb below.

Professor Tim Connell, Director of Language Studies at City University: “I worked closely with George at both City University and Gresham College and he was a monolithic figure in public life.  George was greatly respected, not least for his work in the Square Mile at the time of Big Bang.”

Carol Vielba, Associate Dean for Academic Quality and Standards at Cass: “I remember George as a lovely colleague and a perfect gentleman. I saw him occasionally at events in later years when he was suffering a long and difficult illness, but his kind manner was never tarnished.” 

Alec Chrystal, Professor of Money and Banking at Cass: “George was a super guy and one of the best after dinner speakers I ever heard. His retirement speech was also the best I ever heard.”

Roy Batchelor, HSBC Professor of Banking and Finance at Cass: “George was one of the wisest and wittiest of men. I remember him reducing the normally cynical undergraduate residents of Finsbury Hall to tears of laughter with a characteristically droll after-dinner speech.”

To view George Webb’s obituary in the Daily Telegraph, please visit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/15/db1501.xml